[Marxism] The Sandinista revolution betrayed

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Et Tu, Daniel? The Sandinista Revolution Betrayed*

By Roger Burbach

Upon his inauguration as Nicaraguan president in January 2007, Daniel 
Ortega asserted that his government would represent “the second stage of 
the Sandinista Revolution.” His election was full of symbolic resonance, 
coming after 16 years of electoral failures for Ortega and the party he 
led, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN). The 
Sandinistas’ road to power was paved with a series of previously 
unthinkable pacts with the old somocista and Contra opposition. The 
FSLN’s pact making began in earnest in 2001, when, in the run-up to that 
year’s presidential election, Ortega forged an alliance with Arnoldo 
Alemán, an official during the Somoza regime who had been elected 
president in 1997.

But even with Alemán’s backing, Ortega was unable to win the presidency. 
So, before the 2006 election, he publicly reconciled with his old 
nemesis, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, a potent symbol of the 
counterrevolutionary movement in the 1980s. Ortega and his longtime 
companion, Rosario Murillo, announced their conversion to Catholicism 
and were married by the cardinal. Just before his election Ortega 
supported a comprehensive ban on abortion, including in cases in which 
the mother’s life is endangered, a measure ratified by the legislature 
with the crucial votes of Sandinista deputies. To round out his 
pre-election wheeling and dealing, Ortega selected Jaime Morales, a 
former Contra leader, as his vice presidential candidate.

To read more, see: http://globalalternatives.org/node/102

*This article appears in the NACLA Report on the Americas, 
“Revolutionary Legacies in the 21st Century,” March/April, 2009. See the 
full Report for additional articles on Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia 
and Haiti. http://nacla.org/currentissue


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